Pam’s work in the chemical company was going so well she considered going to graduate school for engineering. Malcolm was doing well with his acting so that by the time he was twelve he had an agent who was always on the lookout for acting jobs for him. As fate would have it, one Good Friday the agent heard about an open call for this new Bill Cosby series and they were auditioning that day. The problem was that Pam had taken the day off and she and Malcolm were spending the day exploring Los Angeles together. They got home around four thirty to a slew of messages from the agent on the answering machine. The messages said that Malcolm needed to get to the audition before 5 PM. Pam and Malcolm broke all kinds of speed records to get to the other part of town, and fortunately the agent convinced the casting agents to stay until they could get there. Malcolm auditioned and got a call back for that following Monday. When Pam got home from work that day, there was only one message on the machine this time. It simply said, “Mom, I got it.”
So off they went to New York. Pam sublet their apartment, just in case.
My thing was, well, I can always come back and get a job typing somewhere. There weren’t computers at the time but my typing was pretty good so I knew I could get another job if I needed to. I also wanted Malcolm to go into this with a realistic view of what could happen. I told him that he had to keep in the back of his mind the question, “What are you going to do if the show is over tomorrow?”
Fortunately, with the show’s success, he didn’t have to answer that question for eight seasons. But today he credits Pam publicly for keeping him grounded and open to new experiences and opportunities like playing music and directing. Pam has had a constant presence in his journey as not only his mother but also his manager, a role she still fulfills to this day. She started out letting other people play those advisory roles to Malcolm because she thought that they knew better. But she began seeing things done to and around Malcolm that didn’t seem right to her. She says that while she was naive to the mechanisms of show business, she was not naive to what she was seeing, thinking, and feeling as a mom. Juggling her roles as a college student and single mother provided the foundation she needed for her new role as his manager. At first, Malcolm was dead set against it, but Pam was determined.
Once I cut those questionable business ties and once he settled into the fact that I was going to manage him, he was okay. The other thing that was going on was that he was now a thirteen-year-old hormonal teenager and the whole world’s thinking he’s wonderful. But I told him that The Cosby Show was just a job and it didn’t absolve him from any of the responsibilities he had before. I said, “When you come home, you’ve still got to clean your room, clean the kitchen, and take the garbage out.” So that wasn’t well received, you know what I’m saying?
I had to be very firm but I also had to allow him certain freedoms. But most of the time, I was right there with him whenever he wasn’t on the set. I would talk to him about what’s really important in life, that this is not permanent because there’s always someone who’s as cute, or maybe even a better actor than he was coming right behind him. I would say, “Don’t get it twisted. This is not about you. Yes, they’re all over you now and saying you’re the best, but they will turn around and do the same with the next person.”
In addition to keeping Malcolm grounded, Pam says that she was determined to make sure that he was involved in every aspect of the business so he’d have a broader perspective of show business, behind as well as in front of the camera.
One of the things I did immediately was to get a business manager and an attorney. When I got the business manager, we’d have meetings to close out [our fiscal year] in June. We’d start preparing taxes and compute whatever estimated taxes we’d need for the following year. At fourteen he was going to these meetings. He didn’t want to go. He went kicking and screaming, but I was like, “Okay, if anything happens, you are not going to say my mama took my money because you were sitting right there with me, whether you understood what was going on or not.”
I insisted that he learn how to handle his finances and understand the business of show business. He would need to know how to take care of his own business affairs and to know what was going on with his own money. He takes charge now and is very much in control of those meetings. I’m there, but he runs them.
Pam has started giving seminars for parents who are thinking of managing their own children. First and foremost, she says the foundation for raising grounded, secure young people is teaching them responsibility and that choices have consequences.
I always said, “You can do whatever you want to do or you can do what I’ve asked you to do. Your choice, but there’s a consequence for either one.” So I think if nothing else, if a parent can impart that to their children—a sense of responsibility for themselves, and others—I think that may not take care of everything, but it is a great foundation for life.
LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Motherhood is a time to parent. It’s no time to be a friend.
Children can take advantage of your need to make them happy, especially when they become tweens and teens and you are seeking to ease their pain, rid your guilt, or otherwise let them know they are loved. But as Pam did with her son, even when he had every reason to feel like and act like Hollywood royalty, we must remind children of the family values and what really matters in life.
Clearly, one of the most important of these family values in the Warner home was to keep Malcolm grounded. The other was fiscal responsibility, which led to their financial freedom. Laura Shin, senior editor for Forbes magazine, interviewed Beth Kobliner, author of the bestselling book Get a Financial Life, who offers money lessons that are good to teach children at any age:
You may have to wait to buy something you want. Kids need to learn delayed gratification as early as possible. The next time they ask for a relatively big-ticket item, for example, say, “Sure. Let’s go home and figure out how long it will take you to save for it.”
You need to make choices about how to spend money. Even if money is not an issue in your household, kids need to know that money is not infinite and they need to make wise choices about how each dollar is spent. Elsewhere in this book I introduced you to the Money Savvy Generation piggy banks, which are divided into four compartments—Save, Spend, Invest, and Donate. Kobliner suggests a cheaper way of accomplishing the same thing: Put these four labels on four jars. Then, whenever kids get extra coins (from grandparents like me) or their allowance, work with them to make decisions about how they should divide the money. She also suggests taking young children to the store and giving them $2. Tell them they can spend it any way they’d like, but they should ask themselves first, Do I really need this, or is it just that I want it?
The sooner you save, the faster your money can grow from compound interest. Obviously for tweens and teens, this lesson gets them to start thinking long-term. Among other tips (including teaching the concept of compound interest!), Kobliner suggests setting a longer-term goal for something that is more expensive. She calls these “opportunity costs”—a way to discuss the wisdom of giving up smaller, perhaps spur-of-the-moment acquisitions to save for a more enduring item or opportunity.
College students should only use credit cards if they are going to pay the balance in full every month. It’s too easy to fall into the credit card trap that banks are notorious for setting as soon as students arrive on campus. If they do get one for true emergencies (not an emergency haircut or dress for the fall fling), only get one with a low interest rate and no annual fee.
A link to these and other helpful tips can be found on www.power-ofpresence.com.
Just a Book of Stamps
It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.
—Roy Disney
On a Sunday morning early in January, at the end of the holiday break, the house was buzzing with activity as the kids prepared to start back to school. Nikki was finishing up a paper, Shani had an assignment due her first day back,
and Wes was in his room packing to return to Valley Forge. We’d all had such a nice holiday that year, but at a cost. I was sitting on my bed listening to the automated voice at my bank giving me the scary news about my balance. I had just enough to get us through to Thursday when I got paid. As long as I had no surprises, everything should work out okay. I thought back to the last time I’d looked at the gas gauge in my car. I needed three-quarters of a tank to get Wes to school then return home, so I should just make it.
Wes entered my room.
“Hey, Ma, can I have some stamps please?”
I reached into the side compartment of my purse where I kept a book of stamps and handed them to Wes. He took a quick look inside. “Mommy, there’s nothing inside.” Still on the phone, I fumbled for my wallet to give him a $5 bill so he could buy a book of stamps when he got to school. I opened my wallet to find there wasn’t one there.
I hung up the phone.
Is this what it’s come to? I can’t even afford to buy my son a book of stamps?
I felt like an idiot. Even with all the support I had and my two degrees and several freelance jobs, my family’s day-to-day economic security was completely dependent on what I could earn and bring home every other week. I was the head writer for Essence: The Television Program and picked up other writing or field production jobs when I could. I even began working part-time in a fur salon. But it still wasn’t enough. It was one of those moments when you realize the fragility of the way you live, when you’re only a paycheck or misstep or two away from financial collapse.
The actual size of my bank account, however, was more a symptom than the actual disease I was afraid of. My fear was that I was on the verge of jeopardizing my kids’ sense of security—their feeling that I could adequately provide for them. If not me, who? I think that may have been the first time in my adult life that I truly “got” what happens in many low-income single-parent homes when kids, sensing this insecurity, assume responsibility for the family’s finances. Most kids don’t fall into street crime because they’re bad. They are trying to fill a need that no kid should have to. I became more determined than ever that this was not going to happen in my home.
Politicians’ favorite sport is dumping on single moms, saying what a terrible environment we create for our children, how we hamper their chances for success. That’s why they don’t want to give us any help; to do so, they say, is to subsidize dysfunction. The only thing dysfunctional about my family was our finances. We loved each other deeply and were very involved in the community and in each other’s lives. But the cost of living in this country is high, and my life plan had been on a trajectory that involved two incomes. With the sudden loss of my husband, I found myself alone on that path with no way to recoup what Wes had been providing. What we need and deserve is the opportunity to earn enough money to have Christmas, good educations for our children, safe streets, and good places for them to play—and enough left over to afford a damn book of stamps.
That book of stamps set me on the path of doing a better job of providing for my family. I never, ever wanted to have that feeling in the pit of my stomach again. I knew I couldn’t work harder but I had to work smarter. I needed a family-supporting full-time job, with benefits. I began sending out résumés to production companies, and just when I was beginning to wonder if anything would come through one of my girlfriends from college, Mary, once again called, as if by radar, to tell me about a position at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Connecticut. It would become my work home for the next fifteen years.
Which is not to say that this was the end of our financial challenges. Far from it. College was next, with three kids overlapping one way or another for the next seven years, but at least we had access to student and parent loans, scholarships and grants, and the security of a regular paycheck and benefits from a full-time job. Most important, because of the foundation’s mission to help strengthen children and families, there was heightened sensitivity to the family lives of its employees. Luckily, my boss, Bill Rust, a single dad raising sons, provided a flexible and compassionate environment that allowed me to maintain my presence with my kids, without guilt, when they needed me.
And oh yes, I always keep some stamps in my wallet, as a reminder of where I was that day, and how fragile finances can become. And just in case anyone needs one.
LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Channeling Shonda Rhimes!—Come from a place of yes.
We all have our personal book-of-stamps moments. I hope you won’t let them frazzle you, but let them help you find you! Sometimes we have to sacrifice one thing we love doing or toss out our best-laid plans for something practical. Based on my experience, I now try to look at these instances as blessings yet to be born. I had to pursue financial stability over the flexibility of freelancing, but doing so put me on a career course I never would have found otherwise and for which I am hugely grateful. I was able to create an environment that allowed me to open up to a world I never knew existed and that had actually felt like a calling never before answered. When we make a pragmatic decision based on our family’s needs, we don’t have to sacrifice personal satisfaction and fulfillment. Believe that it is possible to find new things you love to do, or at the very least embrace and accept them as necessary steps toward the money and opportunities you need to thrive.
Presence of Connectedness:
The ability to physically and/or emotionally experience spark and magic with our children, even in our absence, while nurturing self-care and the comfort and ease we feel with those around us so we may mutually help and support one another.
VI
Presence of Connectedness
Introduction
One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on “going it alone.” Somehow we’ve come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we’re very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It’s as if we’ve divided the world into “those who offer help” and “those who need help.” The truth is that we are both.
—Brené Brown
Being a parent, especially a single parent, can be a lonely job. It’s hard to know for sure when you’re making the right decision, setting the right example, fighting the right battles. It can also be hard to know when you’re getting through, especially as your kids get older. This is when it really helps to have a pride of trusted friends and advisers to turn to. By helping your child find mentors, by curating the group of adults in your child’s life, by surrounding yourself with people who help you stay on track, you create a network of support that you can rely on in moments of doubt, need, or indecision.
Of course, being a parent means that you will always be the first line of defense, and looking for ways to strengthen your connection to your children is an incredibly important part of your role. My years of freelancing were critical to my staying physically and emotionally connected, but as our needs evolved I knew I had to adjust.
Connectedness come in many shapes and forms. Connecting with a reliable pride is one. Another is that all-important connection to ourselves.
As single mothers, how often do we deny our bodies in the service of raising our children? We don’t get enough sleep, we rarely get the time to exercise, and sometimes we reach too often for a glass of wine or something stronger to soothe the tension that all the responsibilities and insecurities visit upon us every day. Health and appearance become just another area of life in which we berate ourselves for not doing more, or doing better.
I doubt if there’s a parent who hasn’t experienced some or all of these emotions at one point or another. True, a family’s strength is directly related to the level of support around it—support that can provide a moment of respite when you are overwhelmed by everything a single mom needs to keep in her head on a daily basis. But it’s equally true that if you have a partner in the house—someone who intimately knows what makes you tick, your moods, idiosyncrasies, and vulnerabiliti
es—that person can become your early warning system, the yellow canary in the mine, when something is off kilter, when things just aren’t right. The partner can also be the safety valve helping you let off steam from the pressures of the day. But if no partner exists, you’ll have to either take out your frustration on the kids or keep them bottled up inside. Before this happens, I’ve learned the first and best course of action is self-care: You can’t be present for your family if you can’t connect with your own needs and yourself. As holistic health practitioner Laurie Buchanan, PhD, says, “Self-care is a deliberate choice to gift yourself with people, places, things, events and opportunities that recharge our personal battery and promote whole health—body, mind and spirit.”
And finally, there is the job we have to teach our children about connectedness—the different ways to relate to different types of people, why manners matter, and how to connect even with those we have little in common with. And as I learned, being able to accomplish a seemingly impossible task is a connection with an inner source of strength that can reap huge dividends not only with our children but in building our own self-esteem.
Connectedness is taught like most other things, by illustrating our own involvement and respect for the different connections we come in contact with every day—from our inner circle and pride to our churches and schools to charities and causes within our communities. Connectedness provides lessons for compassionate involvement with others, passionate connections with causes, meaningfully connecting to ourselves as well as creating the memories and lifelines that establish and maintain lifelong presence with our children.
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